German Project: John McCloy and Shepard Stone

Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy, and The Making of the American Establishment (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992)

Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold War in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) Berghahn explores the career of Shepard Stone, a former military officer who assisted Tom Farmer and the NSA German project while working for John J. McCloy.

EXTENDED ENDNOTES

ALL notes correspond to the endnotes in Patriotic Betrayal, supply additional information or evidence, and should be read together.

Note 12: Negotiating Team: The four members chosen in December 1947, prior to the Czech coup, were Martin McLaughlin, Notre Dame University, William Birenbaum, University of Chicago, who ran against Welsh for NSA president, Larry Jaffa, Harvard Divinity School, and Donald Fraser, University of Minnesota.

Note 42: Robert West re the 1967 Ramparts disclosures: In Loory’s Los Angeles Times story, Fred Houghteling described the reaction of his colleague, Robert West, the 1948-1949 international affairs vice president, to the disclosures as distraught “The CIA funds undermined our whole position.” By contrast, Houghteling declared, “I was delighted. I thought it was a great coup.”

Note 43: Robert Kelly/Robert West conflict: NSA President Ted Harris chastised Rob West for opposing a “national interest clause” that educators and state department officials wanted to apply to all international student projects. See January 28, 1949 H/NSA (Box 33). The battle over this clause took place in ad hoc committees chaired by prominent adults, such as the Committee on International Education Reconstruction (Howard Wilson), and the Carnegie-Endowment (Malcolm Davis) “Committee of Five” [whose title kept changing as more groups joined the effort to coordinate post-war student projects]. West’s view was: “Coordination is good, but can be administered in such a way as to be repressive on new groups.” Harris also took West to task for his demeanor in these meetings, writing that he had “antagonized individuals or groups merely by he manner in which you expressed yourself.” Harris also addressed the issue which underlay his frustration with West: “It is generally known that you favor ‘ eventual affiliation with I.U.S. Many do not know what precautions you have taken to insure the interest of the NSA in your program.”

NOTE 47: German project: The original proposal was submitted on January 13, 1949 to the Department of Army, Civil Affairs Division, Washington, D.C. Parallel youth projects (as distinct from students) seemed also to have grown out of two education missions to Germany, George Frederick Zook (1946), sponsored by the Civil Affairs Division of the Department of Army, and Yale professor, Hajo Holborn, who worked with the OSS/Research and Analysis Branch during World War II, and consulted afterwards on occupied areas with the State Department. In 1949, Holborn advised NSA officials on the German proposal.

The author is indebted to Ralph Blumenau, who represented the British National Union of Students on the German project, for a copy of his unpublished diary. Blumenau wrote in detail about the 1949 summer survey of German students, conducted by himself, Tom Farmer, and Sweden’s Olof Palme, and three additional colleagues from Great Britain, the U.S. and Sweden. NSA correspondence at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University on the German project is voluminous, and also details the occasional ego clashes between Farmer and Palme, despite their general friendship. At the time Tom Farmer devised a second phase of the German project, in which he proposed an annual international seminar in Germany, the U.S. military had just turned over authority for German affairs to the new High Commissioner, John J. McCloy, the former Secretary of War, and Farmer’s friend. Simultaneously, in the summer of 1949, Frank Wisner, head of the covert action unit OPC, asserted his authority over intelligence activities in Germany.

Note 50: Shepard Stone: One of Stone’s consultants during the time he was in Berlin with High Commissioner McCloy, was Father John Courtney Murray, creating yet another relationship between American Catholics and U.S. intelligence. Volker R. Berghahn (see above) traces Stone’s role in the early 1950s at the Ford Foundation and his coordination with State Department and CIA officials.

Note 70: Secret donors: Laird Bell also headed the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, served as a University of Chicago regent, chaired the Harvard Alumni Association, chaired the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, advised the American Military Government in Germany, and was a friend Allen Dulles. Thomas E. Brittingham, Jr. was heir to a lumber fortune whose origins were in Wisconsin. Brittingham, Jr. served as Chair of the Wisconsin Alumni Foundation.

Note 74 International Team: Along with William Polk, Frank Fisher, and James P. Grant, other team members included William Strassburg (Africa); Billie M. Wright (British Isles); James Garst (Scandinavia); Hector Corral (Italy and Switzerland); Claude Salomon (Benelux and Germany); Gerald Maryanov (Yugoslavia and Austria*); Fred Flach (West Indies**); Erskine Childers, Eugene Schwartz, William Holbrook, and Robert West were considered the Executive overseers. See also H/NSA Box 127 * Maryanov stayed in Paris and opened an NSA office instead of traveling to Yugoslavia and Austria. Frank Fisher went to Yugoslavia. **Flach, like Polk, Fisher, and Grant, was not considered officially part of the team and therefore not under “instructions” from NSA headquarters.

Note 76: Francis (Frank) D. Fisher: On November 30, 1946, Frank Fisher was identified by The Harvard Crimson, as Secretary to Douglass Cater’s Harvard Student Council sub-committee (HIACOM); he later became Chair. Fisher was also the former secretary of the Oahu chapter of the American Veterans Committee, and in 1946 assisted Cord Meyer, Fred Houghteling, and others at the Des Moines AVC convention in June 1946 to rid it of communist influence. In the fall of 1947, Fisher helped oust the left-wing leadership of the Harvard Liberal Union and became its secretary. In 1948, he served on the joint student-faculty committee for the Salzburg Seminar. He remained active with NSA until late 1952. The Harvard Crimson, March 17, 1975, has a profile of his career to that date. Fisher describes this period a s a time when he “fought the world communists.” After practicing law in Chicago for several years, Fisher joined the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 1967, he was in Bogota, Columbia when Ramparts published its expose. See Chapter 24 for detail on the threat made to Frank Fisher by the CIA through his brother, Roger Fisher.